James Bryce (1838–1922) was a British historian, statesman, and diplomat. After his education at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford,
he practiced law in London for a short time before becoming professor of civil law at Oxford. He wrote significant works in several fields;
the first of these was his History of the Holy Roman Empire (1864). He entered politics and became a leader of the Liberal party,
occupying a variety of posts, including the presidency of the Board of Trade and the chief secretaryship of Ireland.
He took a fascinating trip in 1876 through Russia to Ararat and entitled the book about his adventure Transcaucasia and Ararat, which was published in 1878.
On this trip, he found wood on Great Ararat although he did not make a huge deal about it as he had a private idea about how it could have arrived on
the mountain. The most interesting sections of Transcaucasia and Ararat are being re-published in The Explorers Of Ararat since Bryce was one of the
earliest explorers of the mountain.
His interest in sociology and philosophy is evident in the third of his great treatises, The American Commonwealth (1888),
a classic that is still read and used. Bryce was ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913; he was one of the most popular ambassadors
ever to be in Washington, since his knowledge of Americans, as revealed in his writings, was profound.
His other major works are Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901) and Modern Democracies (1921).
Biographies were done by H. A. L. Fisher (2 vol., 1927, repr. 1973) and E. S. Ions, James Bryce and American Democracy, 1870–1922 (1968, repr. 1970).